Friday, 10 December 2010

The author of Uganda's 'kill the gays' bill, David Bahati MP, was interviewed 8 December by Rachel Maddow, an openly lesbian MSNBC host. Maddow extensively covered links between Uganda and American right-wing evangelists and politicians earlier in the year but has not returned to the subject for some time.

Maddow led off with the background to the Ugandan bill, which leads all the way back to the fight against nascent LGB rights in the United States in the 1970s and the oft-used idea that lesbians and gays 'recruit' ...

In the final part of the interview, played last night, Maddow ended with a warning to Bahati that he could be charged with crimes against humanity (he has been quoted saying he wanted “to kill every last gay person.”)

She then spoke with author Jeff Sharlet, who more than anyone has been tracking Bahati's backers in the US, both religious and political. Sharlet reminds viewers that in his conversations with Bahati the MP has made clear his real desire to literally kill all LGBT people, however 'in a democracy' he cannot achieve this aim. And he explains how Bahati's American supporters have turned to Uganda as 'a laboratory for their ideas' now that they are being beaten back in the US, how homosexuality was a 'non issue' in Uganda until the Americans arrived.